


Unspool

by Nununununu



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:01:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29572887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu
Summary: Why should he ache for something that’s just another way of informing him that he’s incomplete?
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Comments: 8
Kudos: 83
Collections: DinCobb Valentine's Bingo 2021





	Unspool

**Author's Note:**

> For the DinCobb Valentine's bingo squares 'soulmate au' and 'Din returning to Mos Pelgo'.

He doesn’t ignore it so much as he doesn’t notice.

Din has his mission. Has his ship, has his creed, has the child. Has a mission to complete; a son’s safety to find. Goes to Tatooine in search of another of his kind and is met by an imposter instead – never mind that the man turns out to be brave and loyal and true. If Din looks at him through the visor and feels something inside him is unspooling, it is not of importance. He was unravelled long ago, as a child. Spun into something different instead ever since, something far more than he would be without his armour. This seems an indelible truth.

It can’t be the same for someone who has only stolen borrowed worn it for a comparatively short while, someone who never should have done. Din doesn’t need to convince himself of this; it is a fact. It can’t be the same for someone who wouldn’t couldn’t can’t understand.

He doesn’t can’t won’t stop to consider whether this is a lie he’s also telling himself.

Still, sometimes on staring out at the blank expanse of space between the stars while his hand skirts past a certain planet on the fuzz of the screen interrupting the dark of the cockpit with its faint glow, he almost wonders in the back of his mind just how much else the other man lost when Din took the armour. If there have been other dangers, other troubles, the desert capable of coughing up further difficulties than dragons and another people set on surviving out on the dune sea.

Just how much did Din truly take from him?

These aren’t things he should contemplate. The child sits on the co-pilot’s chair chewing on the pendant, eyes huge. If Din feels stretched thin by the loss of something he never had in the first place in addition to a loss that hasn’t happened yet, then. Then that is the way it should be.

Why should he notice it, after all. Why should he ache for something that’s just another way of informing him that he’s incomplete?

Cobb, on the other hand, sure does notice, but hell does he do his utmost to ignore it. He’s spitting mad about it at first, that the other man comes to _his_ town and demands _his_ armour and then proves so damned good about helping kill the krayt that it makes part of Cobb want to grab hold of all that metal and give a good shake.

Doesn’t help that he feels something like a cog inside his chest winding tighter whenever they’re in the same vicinity – and over those couple of days, they’re in the same vicinity almost constantly. Doesn’t help that every time the other man considers his little green kid with an understated sort of almost tenderness that Cobb feels his lungs have been just about pulverised in his chest.

He’s not been one for a very long time to think about his heart. That was beaten out of him by the slavers, by the suns, by the sand in his eyes and ears. Every breath he takes in on this planet lined with the stuff; he could cough up decades’ worth of it or so it feels.

He looks at the Mandalorian and wants to resent him. Instead such goddamn awful _longing_ grips and grabs him until it feels like it’s shoving its way in through his belly, hollowing itself out a home in amongst his innards. The cog winding ever tighter. He’s heard the stories, but he damned well refuses to pay them heed.

It means nothing. The Mandalorian breaks the jetpack and sends him spiralling into the air and Cobb feels something shatter as he lands. Could be his detachment maybe, that last small scrap of it. The other man bursts out of the dragon’s mouth and Cobb’s grinning, he’s thinking jubilantly _he’s alive_ and _that’s him_

_that’s him that’s him that’s him that’s him that’s the other half of me_

and then Cobb hands over his hard-earned armour after – not his and never was, even if it sure felt like it until this other man turned up and taught him that he was just an unknowing thief. Shakes the Mandalorian’s hand like it doesn’t mean anything, like something deep inside him isn’t clamouring for the other man to see know understand _recognise him_ in return and –

The Mandalorian sees the kid settled and rides away.

Cobb turns back towards his people as if that cog in his otherwise empty chest isn’t cracking. Puts a crooked grin on over the certainty that there went that other half of him, but damn what does it matter, he never has been whole anyway.

If the defiance feels thin, well, he’s had plenty of practice at ignoring things that cause him pain.

Din takes off the helmet to say farewell. If his heart is broken after, it’s just one more part of him. He does his utmost to ignore it. If he finds himself taking a glove off sometimes as he sits in the tiny cockpit of the old ship he ends up in, there doesn’t have to be a reason for it, although there is, of course there is.

Touching his face with his own fingers feels different – he already does so routinely, in the shower and to shave. Trying to recall the weight and warmth of Grogu’s fingers against his skin is a weakness. It’s also a frustration – he can remember in a certain sense, but that’s far from actually feeling it.

Finding his mind seeking to imagine the feel of larger, rougher long and sand-worn fingers against his skin is – There’s no need for it. No need to draw his hand down his bare neck towards the collar of his flightsuit after either, yearning for someone he can’t justify seeing again.

Or can he?

Holding his hand over his chest just worsens the sense that he’s unravelling, that he’s being pulled in two directions at once now and neither of them towards a place he can be. That he lost almost the last fragments of himself on handing over the child. That before then, on Tatooine, he lost hold on one of the biggest pieces without even letting himself realise it.

There are many things he used to not let himself realise. That he told himself he didn’t notice. He’s just now starting to glance upon the immensity of it all.

He finds his still gloved hand skimming the navigation panel, his mind circling between Grogu and –

His heart aches. He feels so _empty_. Can he really not – just go back, just to see the other man for a bit. Grogu needs to undertake his training, deserves the opportunity to fulfil his potential, deserves to be happy and _safe_.

Din isn’t usually one to go back. Instinct tells him to keep pushing forwards, forging on. There are other foundlings out there worthy of being discovered and safe place found for them. The darksaber to deal with. Other Mandalorians, who will no doubt also be brave and loyal and true, if not quite the right flavour all the same.

Din’s not the right flavour, more like it. He leaves the helmet off a little more often. Believes, but also questions. Runs his fingertips over his lips; closes his other hand over the space in his chest.

In the end, it’s years before he returns to Tatooine.

If asked to place a bet on it back then, Cobb would have reckoned he’s older than the Mandalorian, but now he’s just getting old. Even getting out of bed in the morning is more difficult than it ever used to be. He takes to kipping on the couch instead. Not the best or most sensible of decisions perhaps, but who says he’s got to be rational about things.

The hole inside him is an abyss. He smiles through it, cracks a grin for the little ones, cracks no few bandits’ heads. Takes down a few lesser dragons, builds more houses and helps expand his no longer so little town, gets to speaking quite a bit of Tusken. Never does quite figure out how to live with a cog wound so very tightly in his chest.

A contrast – an abyss with a winch in it. Feeling forever like it’s trying to reel something in. An absence, a shape of another man. A suit of armour with someone inside it that isn’t him.

He catches himself touching his face sometimes, glove off. Thinking of the Mandalorian and that little green kid. Hoping the other man succeeded in his mission, hoping the child’s safe. Hoping the other half of him doesn’t feel so incomplete.

He trusts the Mandalorian’s found what he was looking for. No need for Cobb to see the other man again to know that it isn’t and never was him.

Din’s not getting any younger. His knees creak when he stands up from a crouch, his back seems to permanently ache; old injuries seemingly all set on playing up now he’s got time to acknowledge them.

After years in the armour, his body barely knows how to exist without it. He keeps forgetting to move his eyes rather than his entire head. It takes conscious thought sometimes to do simple things such as squint. Not so simple when the HUD used to automatically adjust the visual for brightness.

There’s more grey than not in his hair when Din at long last sets down his weapons – or tells himself he sets them down, at least. Grey in his hair and white in his beard. A blue scarf around his neck, a not so secret weakness – if he tugs it undone and turns the material over, the other side is red.

Sometimes he wraps it around his fingers and touches his cheek. Breathes into the fabric and imagines –

What can he imagine? He never did any more than shake hands to say goodbye. Never got close enough to Cobb to feel the warmth of his body, let alone learn the scent of the other man’s skin. He doesn’t know what to do with himself now he’s no longer fighting. A new home established for foundlings and Mandalorians alike. Din one of them but also not, a forever in between.

He’s so tired of being ungrounded. Of missing the other half of him.

It’s debatable whether Cobb will even remember him. Or whether the other man will be furious; whether he’ll even want to see Din. Did Cobb realise as well?

Did he know; did he sense it? _Does_ he?

Does he feel the same pain?

It’s been decades that Din hasn’t let himself think on this. The possibility now near sends him to his knees. When he comes back to himself beyond that awful absence in his chest, his knees creak all over again as he forces himself back to his feet.

Cobb squints into the suns as the ship lands. He’s not in Mos Pelgo, the town long outgrew any use for him. Another marshal there now with a deputy. Cobb still checks in on them and checks in on the kids now and then.

He spent a while wandering the desert, though that got stale fast. Brought back thoughts of things he’d rather forget. Spent a while staying with the Tuskens too, and then the Jawas, and then ended up finding a new place in a spot of bother, somewhere they needed a friendly face and a steady hand with a weapon, even if age was robbing him of the ability to move quickly and his worn out body has taken to having him nodding off without his say-so nowadays. His new people can elbow him awake if needed and if he feels like he’s shrivelling in on himself under the suns that bit more each day, well, that’s just Tatooine.

He doesn’t expect the Mandalorian to walk down the ramp of the ship. He doesn’t expect the burst of pain that goes off in his chest either, but he sure should have done. Pain to rival all pain; figures he’d go out with a heart attack. Had always hoped it would be something spectacular, but instead it’s just him down on his knees.

“ _Cobb_.”

Funny, he never did hear the other man say his name before; for all the years have robbed him, he has no doubt he’d remember it.

He doesn’t even know what to say in return, doesn’t know what to call the other half of him. But for all his claims of still being steady with a weapon, his hands are shaking so badly as the other man touches them that their fingers almost fail to connect.

That cog inside him is spinning. The desert is spinning along with it. The Mandalorian has taken off his head.

No, that’s his helmet. His helmet, which he’s tucking under his arm, and – oh, there’s his face and he’s smiling just a little with it, even if he does look like he’s experiencing the same pain. Down there with Cobb on his knees.

Cobb grips onto those bare hands with all the strength left in him.

“You’re here,” He manages to croak after what feels like a century, with no little surprise for the fact that he seems to have not quite yet expired, “How long for this time?”

Damn, but he sounds as horrendous as he feels. Who knew that being put together properly for the first time would be so damned agonising. If only he could get over the fear that the other man is going to just – just shake his hand and ride away again.

Cobb’s hands aren’t the only ones trembling, but there doesn’t seem to be any farewells going on all the same.

“Din,” The other man – _Din_ – tells him, and drags a great breath in as if he hasn’t been able to do so in years. Decades, maybe. As if something inside him might also have become whole in a way it never has before been. With his free hand, he touches Cobb’s cheek, dark eyes full of something very much like wonder when Cobb does the same, “And – always. As long as we have left. If you’ll have me. I’ll stay.”


End file.
